I think it was Anne Lamott who said, “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.” But it could just as easily have been Isaiah who said it, particularly in the last part of the book, often called Third, or Trito-Isaiah, written after the official end of the Babylonian Exile. I say the “official” end, because, while we might have a picture in our heads of the liberation of the Jews from captivity by declaration of King Cyrus of Persia in 538, in which everyone just packed up their belongings and returned happily to Israel all in one group, this was not the case. Fewer than 50,000 returned more or less right away, while many remained in Babylon, only trickling back over the next century or so. And even then, not everyone went “home.” The Babylonian Exile lasted for 59 years. That’s two generations. A lot can happen in two generations, including a transformation in the perception of what someone calls home. 

There were those for whom Babylon had become home. They had never seen Israel, or Jerusalem, or the Temple that had been destroyed. They had developed new ways of living–customs influenced by the lack of a Temple as the center of worship, and by the culture in which they had settled, albeit involuntarily at first. There were those who returned to Jerusalem expecting, somehow, that things would be the same—that they could simply pick up where they—or their parents or grandparents–had left off. And there were those—the Faithful Remnant—who had stayed in Israel and made new lives for themselves and their families, rebuilding as they could. They thought, when the exiles came home, that they—the exiles– would adjust to the new reality of what Israel was now like–culturally, politically, religiously–after two generations. 

Those were the expectations. But expectations can be rigid, while life is mutable. So, the exiles who returned, those who lingered, and those who had never left—all of them, as cultures and values clashed, and expectations were dashed—all of them were left with questions: Where is home? What is home? What does it mean to belong? To whom do we belong? Where do we turn if we have no sense of home or belonging? 

Today’s international challenges are living proof of the immediacy of these ancient questions. Refugees fleeing their homes all over the world, desperately, often unsuccessfully, seeking acceptance and belonging in new places. Wars are being fought and so much blood spilled over issues of home, homeland, and identity. Then, as now, these are questions born of an encounter with a chasm between expectation and lived experience—expectations of community, identity, and even of God. And it is this to which the writer of Trito-Isaiah gives voice:

When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains

quaked at your presence…From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived,

no eye has seen any God besides you….

Where is our storybook ending, God? What of your promises of faithfulness and presence? All we see is the same-old same-old of sinfulness and injustice and iniquity, and you do nothing. No wonder we’re straying from your presence, God; you strayed first.

Expectations, may I introduce you to Resentments.

This is an interesting mark of this passage from Isaiah—that the people, far from offering their sincere repentance—which is the usual mark of passages of lament and penitence—the people actually place at least part of the blame for their sinful behavior on a God who had become silent and distant. It’s a sort of non-apology apology:

“But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.”

We are a latchkey people, God—what did you expect? 

This is like children of an absent parent; craving attention, acting out, and yearning for connection. Yearning for God to come home. 

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence—as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries so that the nations might tremble at your presence!”

What’s interesting here is the speaker’s understanding of God in this moment, and of the chasm between God and the people. According to Hebrew Bible scholar Anathea Portier-Young, the image of tearing the heavens open and coming down is not so much an act of anger as of grief–tearing-open, as in rending a garment. The prophet, having expressed the people’s half-apology as the beginning of reaching across the chasm, now issues an invitation:

“The prophet voices the people’s lament, but also dares to invite God to do the same. To rend God’s own garment. To cross the space between heaven and earth, yes. To rip open the cosmic barrier between realms and descend to be with the people on earth. But also to bridge the chasm of hurt and silence. To voice God’s complaint. God’s sorrow. Perhaps even God’s remorse.”

So the prophet prays for all of the people, voicing their invitation/demand, and also their yearning for home in God, for connection with the One who, like the potter, has formed them as their precious creation:

“We are all the work of your hand.”

The prophet prays. The people wait. And hope begins to emerge in the waiting.